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March 19, 2014 04:39 PM ET

Computerworld - President Obama's National Broadband Plan, four years old this month, set out a far-reaching strategy for expanding Internet access in the U.S. to improve jobs and public safety and make it easier for average citizens to access information on everything from personal health care records to home energy use.

One thing the voluminous plan didn't include was an effort to protect data privacy, a topic now top of mind for policymakers in Washington after the Edward Snowden revelations about surveillance of phone records by the National Security Agency.

"A big thing we were not able to do [in the Broadband Plan] was about data security and privacy," said Blair Levin, one of the strategists and authors of the Broadband Plan. Levin oversaw its development when he was on the staff at the Federal Communications Commission and is now a fellow at the Aspen Institute, a policy studies group in Washington.

"The whole area of personal privacy is huge," Levin said. "If the plan were redone, it would focus a lot more on that. Even Singapore is way ahead of us on a lot of that."

While data privacy was discussed in the 2010 plan, it deserved its own separate chapter, Levin said in an interview after joining a panel discussion on Wednesday that included other authors of the plan. The event was held at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in Washington.

But big technology changes don't come overnight, Levin said, and he quoted a passage in the plan that said, "this plan is in beta and always will be."

Levin also said he believes the Broadband Plan should be updated, probably in advance of the next presidential election in 2016, so that whomever is elected can install a transition team to consider the updated plan's contents.

Other panelists involved in the effort while at the FCC noted the plan's role in boosting broadband connections to homes and how it has affected Internet use in homes, schools and industry, including the efficiency of the nation's massive electric grid.

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Gov't push for broadband access yields gains; data privacy still a challenge